ABC TV 7:30pm Sunday, August 7
Posted: Sat Aug 06, 2005 10:36 am
Thought some of you might like to know about this.
Frank Hurley: The Man Who Made History
Frank Hurley: The Man Who Made History
Frank Hurley: The Man Who Made History tells the story of one of the last great imperial adventurers, Australian photographer, Frank Hurley. It retraces Hurley's footsteps across the globe at a time when the world was a much different place.
Hurley captured images of the world's most remote place, the Antarctic, and his pictures are now amongst the most valuable ever taken. However, it now appears that some of them were elaborate fakes.
Hurley was the photographer on Ernest Shackleton's doomed Endurance expedition to the Antarctic. He also photographed both World Wars, explored New Guinea and enjoyed a long career as the visual chronicler of his homeland Australia.
He pioneered the use of colour photography, helped invent the documentary film, and risked his life to bring back images from some of the great events of the 20th century. However, experts are divided over this master of illusion - was he a giant of photography or just a conjurer with a camera?
Hurley's manipulations and uncompromising attitudes would cause conflict throughout his career. His extraordinary World War 1 images of the bloody battle of Passchendaele are considered amongst the finest war images ever taken. His technique of combining images from different negatives into a single, dramatic tableau branded them 'fakes' by his superiors and even today the controversy continues over their value as historical records.
Later in life, Hurley became a prolific landscape photographer of Australia. He died at age 76 in 1962 and, with the world once more searching for heroes, his photographs are in demand again.